[inaudible conversations] >> thank you very much. we don't want this to be like 10 until. i don't know who's going to be the more quiet one so hopefully we'll both interact equally. >> we tried to get our story straight on the way over here, but we actually didn't speak.

you'll be the judge of what happened. that very nice author's description was written by really great journalist who i think is hiding back there named brad at the austin american statesman. perhaps some of you read the story in a statement and that might be what you hear. i would say that you are drawn here perhaps by the beauty of that writing. brad is a wonderful writer. please support newspapers by reading newspapers, you know, whether online. [applause] >> an example of a journalist at a daily meanstreak paper can really be poetic. i am biased because he wrote such a lovely story about is. please look for his byline and just read that paper. shall i go first?

okay. i'm guessing -- i could look around the room. there are many fmo zero friends of molly. i was just in dallas over the weekend, and speaking about this book and far, far north dallas, sort of somewhere near canada, we were so far north. [laughter] >> and i just, you know, when you're speaking in public sometimes you wonder what you should say, and i feel a little liberated here. i will probably say something sure that i wouldn't say in dallas. so bear with a. and those of you from dallas, i also lived in dallas. there's a difference, maulvi was very perceptive in king and her position. so i feel we are on safe turf here.

i would start to say, i started in dallas, here's molly. of course we're presuming as people walk by our thinking this is a new molly ivins book and not, our name is very small as what should be. the publisher thought maybe someone will think this is a work by molly. i was telling a friend that it was very, very humbling. mike and i talked about this. you is very, very humbling to work on a book about tranny. i was telling a friend i was depressed working on a book about tranny personally, not so much maybe about some of the difficult circumstances that we linger with a little bit and molly's life, but about the fact that i realized when we were looking at her, that i myself could never have as many friends as molly ivins. she had friends everywhere. so it was very humbling. somewhat depressing ego

deflating when you realize how popular she was. when we began looking at her, her life, molly was a packrat and i think last, you know, left a transparent legacy available for people want to know more about her. those who love her and admired her. if you take a look at her archives, which are archived at the university of texas can you see literally thousands and thousands of letters that she kept from readers, perhaps some of you, over the years. they begin their molly, and in people apologize in the second sentence that you'll forgive me, i feel like i know you. i feel like you're my friend. and i could use that one word description, molly, with an exclamation point. 100,000-watt smile, very open and embracing and welcoming. what you see in her papers, we saw this repeatedly, that people

wrote to molly from small towns all across the nation, reaching out to molly as if she were a lifeline. and frankly, you know, political lifeline, a role model lifelines, if you will. there was a letter from a small town in oregon, oceanside, oregon, which i happen to know of, a bit about a. my mother-in-law lives there so i know how tiny it is. no cell phone service there, gratefully. but someone wrote a letter, you know, from there to molly saint i feel alone, except for when i read you. i feel that i can think, the thoughts politically, progressive politics, things that need to be changed, and you're my medium. you're my lifeline. there's thousands and thousands of letters like that. it's positively, you know, inspiring and also again very humbling. she had a true extended family,

i would say. of course, when i told something that i was depressed about this, instead of simply my friend said you're not even as funny as molly. you're not talented. wiggin disco link on now for about half an hour, please. enough about that. but molly wasn't always tranny. molly was married when she was born. some of her good friends, i see a few, knew that about her. but i don't see broadly speaking, sort of involved into molly. she was nicknamed at an early age because she loved to burrow in her room in houston, and river oaks where she grew up, those of you from texas know what that might symbolize. river oaks. she grew up with george w. bush basically down the block. and i get to that in a second,

or mike will. but molly was very first. and cheap burrowed in her room and read. i see two of her friendshifriends have been to house, no, she had close to 4000 friends in her book collection. they ran to her harlequin romances two or 800-pound books to winston churchill, all of them equally red, dogeared, underline, notes written in the margin. molly was just a voracious reader, eternally curious. the great traits of a great journalist. just acquisitive in the right sense of that word. fully open to new ideas and expenses. and kind of even before she was a teenager, she was a wiseguy teenager. but she would be in a room and she would read and her brother, and notably her father began calling her the mole.

and that kind of transfer to molly. so if you're curious as to how it became that way, that's in part working from. but her dad was quite an interesting man. i think we had difficulty in reaching a balance in trying to describe them, not trying to sound too pies are sanctimony. her dad was very autocratic. you is described to us, as molly wrote about him in her notes. there are 150 bankers boxes for you to look at if you wish at the center for american history, by banker boxes, three or 4 feet long, the kind with the drawstrings around, the kind law firms use for dead stores for papers that they are filled with molly's life. >> every single item she ever had. >> absolutely. every single item that she i think at from a conscious age

that she put in there and just retain. it's fascinating. i found fascinating. i can't remember last week, and so molly kept everything from her grade school report cards, pay stubs, her letters home from camp mystic, who among you has been arnos of it? can't mystic a famous cat out of the texas hill country where lbj would send his kids. molly went to their. opinionated, stinging letters about how she didn't really agree with the camp counselors. she was developing at a very early age a wit, but the reason i bring it up, her life is really there in those boxes. it was easy for us to begin following her arc, if you will, and how she developed. and as well her opinions. we made a very conscious

decision, speaking on behalf of mike, to try to anchor the book with molly's own words. we decided to liberate not to thank the book with her columns. because you already own those. those were bestsellers but and you read her work over the years. so we presented the familiarity and those works exist, why replicate them? but we wanted no to fill up the book with molly's voice about her own circumstance, her evolution. and a large part of the book is about molly's evolution, how she got to be that one word person, molly with an exclamation point. see how she became, frankly, we could argue until the cows came home from texas i think, the most important journalist from texas, and one of the most influential journalist in american history, not just for

women, but she surely did that but for her way of thinking. about journalism and importing critical thinking. it's all there. it starts at the age of 10. it's a pretty amazing process, and she was kind enough, and i think in a retrospective way, frankly, almost a bittersweet poignant way, i think she was somewhat private and compartmentalized as some of her friends told us. but kept all of these things, i think for a reason, that she wanted us -- she wanted you to see it. we happen to be the two people who went to see it somewhat initially, and that material is there and she wanted to compartmentalized part of her life. she wrote a lot about her dad. she called him general jim. he was almost a martinet, scare the holy hell out of her friends. she was at one point the president of tenneco. one of the most powerful big oil

companies on planet earth, in the history of the energy sector. some of you know that, some don't. when you consider molly politics, progressive, liberal, left-leaning, who knows what they would call her today. my gosh, she would be a godless communist, i think. [laughter] that she would like that probably. she would be happy. thank goodness, barack obama and i been called socialist and worst. she would love that. but to understand molly in a revolution you have to start with her dad. that the starting point. molly begin -- i wonder, my daughter is sure to tonight, i wonder if she will be molly ivins because you will be resisting me through some process that i don't know -- she already existing me. but molly begin resisting her father at a personal level. he was a lawyer and very good at

arguing. and guess what, so was molly. she was the best arguer in the house. probably better than he was. she was one of three children, middle child. she had an older sister and her younger brother. and she was the one who raised her hand and said i'm going to go to war with dad in his conservative politics. we discovered, and this is raw material in the sense of having a raw edge, letters from her father when he was in the military during world war ii where he is using, frankly, awful language, about the african-american soldiers he served. so there's some signposts early on that molly, unicom was wrestling with some things around her house that she was very aware of. she kept these letters by the way. she kept the letters that her father wrote. they are kind of raw, bits of racism. so that's where it started. that's where molly began pushing back.

and i think initially was just to be heard, autocratic household. you know, she became thinking and really reading person. the mole up in her room, you know, elevated to a matter of discussing politics and arguing, not kidding around, and adjust there. is evident in her letters, her papers. the time is that she kept at the age of 12, 13 and 40, she was having political arguments with the president of tenneco. and he was uncountable with that. because sometimes she was out flicking him. and making fun of him. even though he did know she was making fun of him, which was her art perhaps. sometimes even later in life she had that magical ability to needle without someone realizing. so that's really where it began. i was talking to somebody today about the fact that if you, you know, you get attracted to the things that are hidden from you. you can't get that thing and it

becomes more alluring and becomes outsized as a goal. and that happened to molly as well. she knew that her father in a sense, cordoned off this family. they grew up in river oaks down the block from george w. bush. she went to saint john's, which is one of the finest private schools in america. george w. bush wanted to go to saint john's but they wouldn't let him in. so he went to kinkaid, which is not a bad school also. another very powerful ride school. but they were in the same area. they just live down the block from each other in river oaks area. they went to the same country clubs, they were in that the nexus of the high-energy and high political world in texas. senator john tower would drop by the house. john tower would. that's the kind of if i'm she grew a. she begin resisting, get back on track, she began looking at things -- i think she felt were seditious and he said.

something that was just going to bug the crap out of her father, and she began reading a little publication that a friend of hers had had in her house that, you know, clearly was not welcome at the ivins house. although it was called "the texas observer." unit, 32nd sale pitch, support "the texas observer." if you believe in molly ivins, if you believe in independent journalism, subscribe to it. go online, tell them you love it. the observer is defined in many phases by molly sensibility or her view of morality in terms of -- please support it. she began hanging out with a friend who was kind of curious. how was he described? a new york intellectual.

>> new york doctor intellectual. >> writer new york intellectual jew, and he hung out with musicians i believe. she began hanging out with a friend -- >> musicians and poets. >> a little bit out of the orbit for molly's usual crowd at the house. she found a soulmate in school and began hanging out with -- well it would become her lifelong friend. so she was influenced or she found his publication, she found is called "the texas observer" and it was -- he was a secret pleasure. and having said that she was reading in the houston chronicle and hearing a lot about at saint john's. and she delves into it because she felt she had been excluded. it was a treasure and she burst herself in and studied it. i think took a pleasure as a teenager doing something your parents would scream over. so she went deep in that direction.

she was also influenced at saint john's by an english professor who was unbelievably sadistic or if they knew what he was doing a school, they wouldn't have had him at school. he believed in, shockingly, the right to free speech. and he supported kennedy in a presidential election. my god, he could quote from artist hemingway and robert frost, and believed in voting rights and community drives that might seem kind of nutty in context in houston, texas, in the late '50s, turley '60s. in her orbit, very again almost revolutionary. she was influenced by the teacher at saint john's who somehow or rather getting away with is shaping of young minds in reading "the texas observer."

she was off to the races. she was still on a prescribed path for a while on her way to, and very prominent schools of higher education. her mother had gone to smith, and her grandmother had gone to smith as well. guess what, that's where molly was going to go. and she was going to go there not to really pursue the same things that gloria steinem had pursued as this. she was going to go, get a little shine at a social level. i think her father -- i'm speculating that i think maybe he saw her involved in somewhere with the arts, but not in any incident to her level. maybe should be an educator. is not anything that touched on anything remotely political or truly sociocultural.

she washed ashore at smith after a little hiatus at scripps. she didn't like the scripps a whole lot, right? maybe i will read that little portion. it's kind of a funny thing. i don't. i would just read you a little bit about molly, you know, going off out into the world. when molly begins leaving texas, she found people inordinately fascinated with texas. lbj, nina, was on the radar of course. something awful had happened in texas, and dallas in 1963. molly as she went around, and i know many of you have experienced this. i still do to this day. people ask what the hell's going on down there? what is it about that former country called texas that still behaves as a rogue country. and i think because she's

predisposed to laugh all the time and have fun, and right up until the day she died, she tried to have a little fun and some of her inscription. even about some of the awful things in texas. she told people always when she went off to college at scripps and then at smith that she was from east texas. geographically, we could argue about that, what i guess houston is east texas, sort of kind of. but i guess you when you hear is texas looming, right. but she likes anxious to east texas. here's why. this is what she would say. over the years she would insist again and again that she grown up in east texas, not houston really. and this is from molly. these are her words. i grew up in east texas. i play basketball all over east texas. weasley in a town called back. is a big joke that i'm going to play in bed. let me take him to east texas woman are some of me is when on the face of the earth.

we used by any small towns. the guards were almost invariably named after flowers. there would be lely, rose and violet. the forwards were always jewels, ruby, perl or opal. but it was tranforty we have had two names like ruby joe orton pearl and had always worked pink plastic earth during the basque ball games and they would look good at the dance afterward. minas woman i ever met. [laughter] >> so i looked harder does it way nowhere texas is? i don't believe it exists at molly was having some fun. i actually did with that with our fact checking. maybe there is. i don't know, but she was developing a voice when she went off to college. people would ask her, on a serious vein, what happened in texas with president kennedy, and he was lyndon baines johnson. dominating news events as molly was going at into the world.

people really did want to have her explain. and so she began trying to describe the place where she had grown up and had traveled around a little bit. she would tell stories about preachers that she heard on the radio when she would be on car trips with her dad across texas, and people and at smith and at scripps. she went to scriptural one and transferred back to the east coast. they were entranced. it was the beginning of molly, the storyteller, and molly, you'll come having a little fun with texas, with texas mythology. she learned that people would be on the edge of their chairs and their jaws will be dropping, my would. they were passing with plastic chair covers during the game and they were mean? did you heard these preachers on the radio saying send your money to the station in houston, texas. and people were doing it. been on and on and on. it really did seem like an exotic world for a lot of folks.

she realized people love to hear the story. she and provide them a little bit, had a little fun with. did she do it in a mean-spirited way? i don't think ever. right through her take on both bill clinton and george w. bush to task, i would argue with you right now, wrestle with you, molly never did it with acid tipped dagger appeared her humor is different. i hate to use the word tauber, because that suggests an elevation, to some sense but it wasn't like what you hear on some of our cable news shows. molly didn't do that. she didn't stoop to conquer. she didn't besmirch her argument by, never did. didn't do it. she was quite opinionated. [laughter] >> but she didn't do it to hurt you. she wanted to knock you off your high horse. she did that repeatedly. but she like to say that she was from east texas and especially at smith, the reason i wanted to

linger. smith was where molly in some sense became radicalized may be overtly using that 10-dollar word. she got there at a time when betty fernandez coming back to campus to talk about the feminist stake in gloria steinem was making a name for herself as an independent journalist, address women's rights and women's issue in america, and the way that hadn't been done before. molly had the distinction as an example at smith of going to hear that he could watershed almost revolutionary work. and she was only one half a dozen people who showed up. so she had a predisposition to want to be informed, this open vessel. she was always in pursuit of the things that she felt had been hidden from her that had, you

know, she felt that her father and her family, and fate and circumstance in texas has shielded from her or hidden from her. sometimes deliberately hidden from her. she began in a sense on this journey of marvelous, just marvelous self-education that was unyielding, given, over the journalism school, you should be in this business and thus you are curious. molly was the biggest bunch of the world. she wanted every expense, she wanted to live life to the maximum and absorb it, learn, learn, learn. journalism is about being school the rest of your life. that causes people to get up and leave my class because they say oh, my god, i'm going to be with people like you for the best of my life so i better get out now go to law school. but molly's philosophy was that i'm here to keep learning. she just loved being around people, absorbing her stories, and could be the king of siam

and it could be the rodeo guy from atlanta texas. she felt them to be of equal value, frank appeared in terms of feeding her head and feeding her soul. she loved it. but molly, and please interrupted. i need a good editor. somebody interrupted. molly, into smith, is still rarefied above the cloud world, children are privileged, very wealthy people, powerful people. she went to school with the daughters of the most powerful people on earth, okay. i think i feel safe in saying that. she was engaged to be married to a young man, and this is some of the things that we found interesting because wages had known about, many other very good friends had no. one of her good friends, kaye northcott, was a very big figure

in journalism. she said she was tagged when reading this book to learn that molly had the depth of relationship that she had with this young man in college. molly was engaged the mary to a gailey, who was i don't really know that we could've ever adequately described one of the most mercurial, unusual psychedelic people i've encountered as we research him and learned about it and learned about him through the prism of molly's own words. he was extremely affluent guy also from the houston region, but he had gone to yale. is dead was assistant secretary of state of the eisenhower administration. but he was a cia mole or spy. so consider that, given molly's politics as you know. molly was once engaged to a young man whose father was frankly a covert diplomat,

frankly cia operative. that boggles my mind because i know that molly knew that. what we're talking but here is a process of transformation and i will explain why it's relevant in her life. this guide was off the charts. maybe i could just read you just a smattering. this is such a radical transformation in a moment of molly's life. his name was hank hall and. at yale he spoke seven limoges, was a dj on a spanish lane which station in new haven, studied hypnotism, had a prosperity brought back from south america and taught to sing opera. he wrote an italian were sardar, remind people he was a near-death blue baby born when the volcano erupted in new mexico so what he was planning to add to advance to enter me to be the holy hell out of most people on the tennis court and

had become an argumentative atheist. this is her fiancé. he was wired, gurgling with news, cabinet in a way that left people either breathless or a. he devoured books, ideas, latched onto philosophies. he was like a private school banshee. feasting on things that he knew my vault him far above and beyond his expected station in life. and he didn't really want to be like his father, the anonymous broker in the white silk suit doing the cia's private work over endless banana daiquiris and hotel lobby meetings in pre-castro could get if you let he might have been comfortable with some of the modern cia operatives. the ones who dispense with tedious formalities, geneva conventions, went for the jugular, back to the bone stouter he could learn any language that he was a fierce capitalist without any religious

most of. this quote is from his sister. who would have become molly's sister-in-law if their marriage had gone for. he was not a compassionate person. he was tackling. he grew up with a really cold indifference to social issues. or societal issues of the heart. and again, quite contrary to molly. so power and money work hank holland's world. he felt religion was a open of the people. at the same time he was a very cold capless, says his sister. in a sense,. >> translator: might not have been all that different from dick cheney. [laughter] >> so we over at the journalism school sometimes use a bad choice of words as my daughter calls wtf. can anybody guess, what the fudge? that to me was a wtf in molly's life. i hope molly is laughing now when hearing this. i presume she's laughing. she's laughing and having.

the thought that someone would say holly -- excuse me, that molly was going to be engaged to dick cheney. [laughter] >> that's an open. maybe the world would have been different. maybe molly would have exercised behavior modification. and i don't mean -- i don't mean in a way that dick cheney probably of course did. dopamine to get political on you for a second. to try to keep the narrative on track. the man whom she was engaged to be married to -- let me just read one last thing your she was engaged, they're going to be married. friend to literally grew up with mullah and stay with her through different phases of her life sometimes viewed her through the prism of her relationship with her fiancé and her future political inclinations or constitution, it's almost difficult to imagine that hank

holland was once the most important person in her life. their relationship was so far removed from those forgotten ditches in houston along buffalo bayou where the mosquito made the water shake. far from the shotgun shacks on river oaks where she had grown up and where the shotgun shacks were living like they had just given up, far from the putrid smell and grinding war of the oil refineries that pay for her own college education. given molly's final evolution, it would be difficult, very difficult for france to think that she was once willing to entertain thoughts that went far beyond ayn rand, scientific atheism and even rugged individualism. this is from her fiancé's sist sister. hank holland and molly constructed thing so they could reconstruct them on a higher level. that was the kind of thinking that he and mary, she called molly, still mary's shared at

the time to check this out. this is just mind-boggling to me. i think that he and molly once talked about a master race but again, i am almost staggered again. you know, co-biographer here to learn that, we wrestled with that for a very long time, studied him probably more than any other person in her life to determine whether that was true. and it seemed to be. long story short, dramatic thunderclap is that he died in a wickedly violent motorcycle accident just outside the grounds of the warehouser lumbered magnet fortune worth of lumber magnate were headquartered in washington. molly was living above the cloud line, hanging out with friends. the most powerful lumber family in america. her boyfriend was out there. she was going to go join him. and he drove his motorcycle,

italian imported motorcycle basically into a guardrail and died instantly. she went to his wedding dress as it would've -- forgive me. she went to his funeral dressed as a widow, dressed in black and dale. and her life was changed. we maintain this is armchair psychology. you might call it that check we maintain that event had to happen for molly to be liberated in a sense to go on and become molly ivins, champion of progressive political causes, social justice warrior, that she, you know, you might judge us when you read and say that's a canard. that's a literary device that you choose to explain this thing. we write in the book, his ashes were dispensed into the long

island sound, and by his family and it was as if molly -- holding molly down, these expectations to join above the cloud line that gilded world that her father and mother really wanted, they too were blowing away like the ashes. and molly was irrevocably changed. she, on campus, at smith, drinking a little more than she had your hanging out a little bit later, smoking cigarettes, and in a great wonderful, did a wonderful stereotype, wearing a trenchcoat, puffing on a cigarette after to what her best friend and said i want to be a writer. i want to be a journalist. and i'm just going to write. so it's a very big, for us anyway, in terms of our exposition, are learning about molly, that was a thunderclap moment. that help you understand her a little bit better. >> one of her friends at the

time said everyone in the group, when the guy died, had a feeling that the wealth and power that could protect them and stuff, this young guy from dying what good was it? what use was a? they all kind of pulled away from living the life of wealth and power, and that was one reason why she started pulling away from the society and the wealth that she came from a. >> yeah. it was such a strange -- given, again, the molly that we know him and that you might admire, just an unbelievable transformation. she had this sort of nietzsche and you mixed with some ayn rand super individualism sensibility. and molly was such a giving an open person, about social justice and civil liberties, that seems like it disconnect almost.

but we feel that he had to pass away, almost in this explosive way, frankly, to move on. so, you know, molly, her dad didn't know what you think that he got her a job at the houston chronicle. that was a bad thing for many reasons because molly was now hanging around with scruffy, scruffy types. and i think terra firma talking about that, because look at us. [laughter] >> so we know what, and i worked at the houston chronicle with some of the people that molly worked with who were still there when i got there. but she began hanging out with the folks, some were north of skepticism and a tiny bit, tiny bit south of cynicism. and they were damon runyon folks men and women who like to hang out late at night, they like to enjoy cool beverage and smoke cigarettes and gather. and friendly, after work, talk

about stores that they couldn't get into the houston chronicle. [laughter] >> that the editors wouldn't let in because of the stories they knew were asked about the editors. [laughter] >> so they had a good. molly had the goods at an early age and she developed as great skepticism. you might've heard the term women's pages, does that still ring a bell for anybody? back in the day in the '50s and '60s, maybe in the '70s, well, in some places i can think of, maybe today still. anders less enlightened editors have extraordinary objectified women in journalism, they need to be exiled to the women's pages. that was usually in the back of the paper and it was the last newsy stuff and it was the fluffy stuff and it was the society stuff. not besmirching society, i'm just saying women were not allowed to do hard substitute news, frankly offered opinion. good lord. why would that be allowed?

so you would find opinion on the op-ed page, the editorial page. somali entered journalism frankly really as a summer day. her dad is wanted her to do something and he thought it would be an innocuous. little did he know, that he had sent her out even deeper into the seditious world. but now in the realm of practical applications using around with people and tried to, you know, write the news and hope for any correct manner and bring it back. she just loved it. she loved it the hurly-burly, give-and-take stuff that i think hopefully i don't know how it occurs as much as i used to in terms of the digital age, but back then there was a just, you know, you know, newspaper folks hang out together. they stayed out late and had a ball and had a blast. that's what i got into the line of work, and probably look the way that i do. but she just jumped into it. there were characters, real wow,

interesting funny people at the houston chronicle. very talented folks who beautifully written story, wonderfully reported sword again, a lot of things, not run because they are sacred cows oliver houston, as there still are as there are here in every city. she drank the kool-aid and really loved this profession. she went back for three internships at the houston chronicle. hurt -- i don't know what her dad was thinking. general jim let that one fall off the radar and probably shouldn't allow her, if he wanted her to continue in that prescribe that. her mom had big hopes to become a society columnist that and actually, specific host that molly would be chronicler of the high society of houston and center note and say why do you think about, you know, frank, a new profile of a new church being built in river oaks.

molly would resist these suggestions of course. she got into it. she just that sort of little bit here so hopefully you can ask questions, she went to the columbia journalism school. i think her father was beginning to get suspicious at that point. because that's in new york city. and that's probably a hotbed of something that's, you do, that i went to the same school. i grew up in new york city. i went to columbia, so i know. i was completely dissuaded even at the school i was in in new york, don't go to columbia. it's a hotbed of revolutionary it made me want to go there more. i think molly want to go there for these reasons as well. at columbia she became -- she had to endure the same thing i had drilled into me, objectivity is king. by objectivity you must reduce a completely fair and balanced story. he said, she said. fair cows. one side, the other side of the earlier have the dynamic, the better your story is.

and molly in the heralded ivy league columbia journalism school that again, her father was kind of worried. i think he said it's an ivy league school at least. and there she will achieve the finishing that we want, and perhaps shake it out of her, these tendencies. she will come back to texas. at columbia she began questioning the very things that, and i'm not knocking it, i love the school, but there was a velocity, that objectivity, but your stories must go to the high holy altar of objectivity and stay there. and if you did otherwise, you were not a journalist. you had an agenda, you know. somali began resisting because molly was a life of resistance. liker camp counselors, she didn't like some other thing she was hearing through life and she carried that for. she began developing, this is important if you want to understand her, she began

resisting this objectivity. if i could describe his or boil it down, might explain it better, molly just simply believe that objectivity was who we. and she is stronger like what. that sounds sacrilegious. even when i hear it i get a little scared. i think my teachers from columbia are going to come find me. hunt me down. what she believed as you shouldn't give equal weight in a store to people that were lying. that's what she meant by objectivity being whooie. things don't advance the publics right to note that don't advance humanity, that are just there to allow someone to rant and rave. frankly, unit, bring forth their posture, positive in the news that is their own agendas that are illegitimate agendas. so you get into this trap,

circular kind of logic. i've got to be objective, i will bow spiced with that in fact, your story is and balanced as you given equal weight to things that shouldn't be there, have no merit, intellectual merit, artistic human merit. so at a very young age, very ambitious, very ambitious, very ambitious. she began developing what she would call struggle for subjectivity. extremely counterintuitive. she began developing that struggle, and then try to fast for that she got out of school and what the media does tribune where she really struggled that she was bifurcated person. almost schizophrenic existence. they sent her out to cover the minnesota state fair, the local rodeo and stories about putting new shingles on your roof. my goodness, molly ivins, what the heck. on the flipside, suspiciously, she was going to every corner she could in minnesota to find every radical that existed.

a little difficult in minnesota, i will just say, at that time. but she found them. in her opinion the goodhearted aggressive. and she tapped into a deeper vein of socialist, old guard union organizers, people who were affiliated with churches again that were doing somewhat radical work. and on the sly she was sneaking the story in the paper one by one and becoming more brave, more brave. so you read her body of work in her first newspaper job, first real non-intern job and it's like listening to people. to save molly doing these objective stories, and then these real hair-raising stories where she, by their standards, she is abdicating saying interviewing militants, jerry really and abbie hoffman and david dillinger who were passing through town, and getting more comfortable in that same. there's another, unico thing

that no one knows about molly unless you read our book, lsu newmont in some way. forgive me for bringing it that way, and by she fell in love again in minneapolis. she made this amazing transformation, the next man in her life was a radical activist. she -- this man was addicted to the capitalism at a high, high level. molly is now living with aim radical activist, so charge that he was charged with crimes and brought to drop your molly, based on our research and writings, secretly testified on his behalf without letting her employers know. i can tell you today how that would get you in trouble if i think it would get us all in trouble, right? even in journalism, mike goodes. she went to a trial and testified on behalf of her boyfriend, her lover, the person

she was living with. was basically choose a radical activity. she began going door-to-door doing community organizing for grins, just to spice it up a bit. she began writing for the militants, which was the socialist party in america. i just would be beheaded if i were trying to do any of this in my more recent years in the newspaper. so she was quite brave, quite brave. you may judge her, you know, anyway you like. i'm just telling you what she did. she had a very combustible, it interesting, intense relationship with his mentor the minnesota police department hated molly to such an enormous degree. frankly, in part because she testified on behalf of her boyfriend and was able to free him. he had been accused of causing a big ruckus at a george wallace traveling. molly played that to be justified by the way.

that was a good thing, and of course. she was hanging around the courthouse one day when her boyfriend was about to go on trial. and she heard a police officer there, her story is that she heard a police officer there talking about the codefendant of her boyfriends who was an african-american activist in town. and she heard the policing that we are really happy to get these in word people, and molly conveyed that to her boyfriend. he said holy guacamole, let's get you on the witness stand to testify about some of the prejudicial perhaps behavior in this police department, let's try to basically put me in jail and she did. to the police department didn't like molly. and they named -- the police department bought a pig, literally a pig and they named it molly.

you know, in honor of molly ivins. and they denied for ever until the pigs come home in minnesota that it was just quite a coincidence, that the minneapolis police to barbin had a pig named molly. it was a little bit of their wiseguy retribution i guess. molly left there because she couldn't stand being stifled by the paper. she felt -- she was dying on the high altar of objectivity. so what did molly ivins do? she called the collector the paper one day when she was out of town and resigned. so she had a lot. she called him collect and we accept the charges from molly ivins? yes. i'm quitting, bostick so they pay for it and in some. that's molly ivins as well. there's many examples. my goodness, the courage to do this, she decided on her way out of town after she resigned collect, to write a story in the alternative newspaper, the

austin chronicle, if you will, of minneapolis. that i call, forgive me, the mother of all sq letters. forgive me. i'm sorry. but that's what it was. she wrote several thousand word article in which she not only burn the bridge of her old newspaper comic she threw several grenades over shoulder that it was stodgy, lame, and frankly doing the public a disservice. they were printing lies and misery. she i guess felt pretty confident. she did get a letter of recommendation. by the way, when she called collection called a guy who hired her. she got back to texas as quick as she could. and she went to work for "the texas observer," which he idealize and love at an early

age. that's the mall you guys know. the molly in 1970 when she landed in texas, at least in terms of the things that she wrote and the way she wrote, kind of challenge. you will find no difference between her work toward the end of her life in 2007 and 1970. kaye northcott, again, her very, very good friend, a coeditor of "the texas observer" in 1977 that molly came to texas -- well, she came to her job interview with a sixpack of beer or so shots the continues. she showed up with a sixpack of beer, got the job which says something about her, the people at higher. it was all good. by kaye northcott said that molly came fully realized that she was right in thinking in just the same way that she did decades later in 2007. she had a voice, and attitude, a sense of humor, ability to channel the spirit of will rogers and samuel clemens, other

people. you know, frankly, that's not just my description. many people far more airtight than i, us, forgive me, have said that about her. she came fully realized as an individual. she came to the devil's playground. there was a lot of low-hanging fruit. she was in the orchard that keeps on giving. it's really not far away from your. is the big granite building that you've seen. holy, you know, cal. she had gone to heaven. please, thank you. it was the atm machines that was broken your and she had a lot of fun there. i guess we could -- you've read this now and i think that we left this out of our book, but you know, she just loved being there and writing about things.

she and the observer prepared for the opening round of the 1971 state legislature. she pushed open the opposing doors and that led to the oppressive woodpaneled second floor chambers that there were two good old boys, she perked up when she overheard one say to the other, you should have seen what i found myself last night. she don't talk neither. okay. yeah. molly had endured three years of emphasize objectivity up in minnesota, and she had some exposure to quote, serious political reporting as practiced by the veteran new york and washington journalism. now at "the texas observer" she had free reign, not just to address issues that barely dented the pages of mainstream papers, the outside issues of poverty, racism, systemic corruption, but to do with a chiding, confiding, nor did in fighting in you, the regime that to step back and forth between a

mocking condemnation and a can you kind of wonderment. from her first piece is there's that sense of extension of sort of rap sessions as she had with reporters in houston or minnesota, and even in austin with her friends. but it was an invitation to the reader to come behind the curtain and study the cartoon characters, they malapropisms, and bourbon rationalization for a million political mind f's. excuse my limited in. i'm channeling molly. so she had done. that's where molly, i don't know, bias, maybe this road -- we think things about texas. everything is bigger here. so i don't know if molly was able to get a lot of low-hanging fruit up in iowa. i'm not mocking i would.

i got a two flash forward. she spent six years really developing this voice. what happened was that as people increasingly want to understand taxes were mystified by it, just couldn't grasp it. still can't buy the way. that they were asking her in "the new york times" particularly was asking her, molly, explain texas to us. we see her work in the observer, and you're in the moment but your hovering above it because guys are really groping, grasping. you are often the only woman in the room. that's a significant theme in the book. she was courageous. she really was the only woman and very, very often at the state capital. and most particular, you notice, texas, the real lubricating way things work anywhere in state capitals is sort of, you know,

as bob dylan says in the halls of justice, the real justice is in the halls. i think bob dylan said that. molly knew that you could go in the hallway, you can go in the backroom of the state capital, you can go to the wet bar in the stall under that through where the state business, our business gets decided. then it's a late night, you know, places around town, around the state. that's not really in the open chamber. i don't think anything has changed. molly cat into that. she went deep. she went underground. she must have embedded herself as the only woman in the room. and what she had to do, i think regrettably, she began taking a lot. she drank a lot. because these guys, men, were hard drinking son of a gun is that these guys were carried guns that they drove -- bobble it was one of the former lieutenant governors, i

maintain, maintain us in the book. i wrote about bush that bush wouldn't be president if not for bob bullock. you had to hang out with these men and drink with these men, stand your own. by the way, she could drink all of them under the table. stay up later. was surprised when they read her columns. oh, my god, did i say that? molly would go in the women's room, she would go down another corner and write down what they were saying. some of them were a little daffy. they would thank her for spelling their names right that they didn't realize what she was saying. it's a reflection on them. molly was sought out for news about texas, and she went to "the new york times" in 1976. as a teenager, she had written on it little piece of paper once, i want to become famous by the time i'm 25, or i will commit suicide. and she put it in her wallet and

carried it with her through life began molly -- she wanted to be well-known. i think she wanted to be a celebrity. but she wanted to be a famous and going to "the new york times" spoke to the. she thought she could do the same things in new york that she could do here, but for a national audience. "the new york times" shut her down. they took every colorful word, all the innuendos that she had, stripped it out of her copy, they railed after. when she tried to write, blowhard fatcat in albany, new york, where the state house is better have a beer belly, they would change it to protuberant abdomen. molly is going oh, my god. that wasn't having. it culminated her rather famous, for molly, a moment where she was sent to new mexico to write a story on behalf of "the new york times" about, there's no

other way to describe, a chicken killing festival. people would gather around and you and kill a lot of chicken, roast them up, pluck feathers and talk about chickens. i have no other way of describing that we have festivals like this with texas. i'm spice that was an index of. we have the fireman festival in martial. she couldn't help herself. she wrote a story, send it back to the editors in new york and she described the festival as a gang pluck. [laughter] . .

come to new york. she knew she was coming for a dressing down. quite deliberately she shows up at the new york times office in new york wearing a dress that when friends saw her, there were botches on it. the editor of the new york times is the most powerful man in journalism, sets the agenda for everything on television. he is going to yell at you when you get up there. what are those blotcheses? blood. chicken blood. from the chicken killing festival. she was going to make a little statement. her friends prevailed and she dressed demurely. she was trying to import dirty

socks to the new york times and she replied i knew i couldn't fool you. she left the new york times right after that. if it wasn't for her protuberant abdomen as she left. the dog's name was the s word. we know what that means. a four letter word beginning with s. she brought this dog to new york and that did not go over well. she would say the full name. to mix it up she would walk down the street and do that too. in new york that didn't faze anybody because everyone call each other that but sometimes

she would say sitter. she would laugh too hard and smoke too much. she came back to texas, the dallas harold, the paper that was more liberal in the place i worked at, the dallas morning lose -- news. she came back and was given a very long leash and they began regretting that long leash almost instantly because molly ivins didn't like dallas. she liked a lot of the people but there was something about dallas as you might imagine that just didn't work for her. she couldn't help herself. she began tweaking the nose of the bear by yelling about the

city of dallas. we have a moment in our book when molly is walking down -- one particularly in dallas, there are many moments when molly sox a guy in the jaw. one guy landed in a cactus patch. he was basically stalking her. she was walking downtown dallas in pacific and griffin. she had a couple of beverages with a guy named billy porterfield was a great figure in texas journalism. she was standing at the corner one day in the mid 80s.

alongside them, several members of the harlem globetrotters began walking across -- in dallas you get a ticket if you jaywalk. my wife got a ticket there once for jaywalking. they began walking across the street. molly felt that someone in this gaggle of men had inappropriately touched her, pinched her on the bottom. she turned around, leaned back and socked a guy, knock his teeth out. blood went spraying. it was the wrong guy. it was billy porterfield. they had a good laugh about that. molly just loved that. she loved that.

i wanted -- just to rack up. i have that bookmark here, troubles with men. porterfield flashed his missing tooth at the newspaper. it made a good story for years to come. he discovered molly ivins was the greatest journalists he had never knew and he knew she really hated dallas. it is the austin of texas, nothing but a marcus city. let's get out of this crazy place. i am pandering here because we are not in dallas. i didn't read that up in dallas. she wanted to come back to austin and the paper, dated her. he is just making fun of dallas over and over again. that coincided with the gop coming to town for the

republican convention. ronald reagan and the elder george bush and nancy reagan were showing up wearing cowboy hats with these ostrich feathers and no true cowboy in texas would be seen -- dallas was playing with that image. she wrote her own ticket to get out of town. they accommodated her. she came here and that is where you began to know her personally. she worked on behalf of them, the dallas times put it out of business the day after we bought it. molly, being one of the true stars, landed on her feet quickly, she felt really

comfortable and began writing three columns a week for them and some other articles she wrote were collected in a book one day. maybe you have heard of it. it became a runaway bestseller against all odds. her editor who we talk to said it was knocked down with a feather because sometimes collections of journalism don't sell that well. it was a collection of her columns and various publications. a huge best seller. phenomenal best seller. an unlikely collection of journalism. collection of liberal journalism written in a funny way. he believed all those people i mentioned earlier had found it with molly ivins. all these little towns who

didn't know the person in new york city. they coalesce and made that book a huge best seller. just hopefully to finally conclude, you might feel the book is disproportionate. we linger on her evolution, not so much her later years. there were other good writers to address more contemporary phases, wanted to look at a revolution as a backdrop for full disclosure. there are elements in the book that are quite painful and also very wrong about molly. she was an alcoholic who had many in tense moments. there was a moment -- many moments we learned about when she could have died.

a very poignant moment written in her own words when she is working for the new york times. she wrestled with alcoholism for decades. very ironic that she is reading a history of the new york times and passing of in her bathtub. i don't know if we can do justice to a story like that. we don't linger too much. we found some portions of her diaries which she donated to a public entity. she wanted this to be known. what you probably prevalent leno's she had cancer and and

george three bout of it. we learned about that through her archives. she learned how that building work the. she was a true mentor, demonic figure. he made the trains move on time but as of personality he wrestled with some demons. she had to hang out late with

him. she drove at 100 miles per hour. she drove to escape the high rate husband of a woman he was with who fired machine guns in the hill country. a very intense man. he adopted george w. bush as a political acolyte. she learned from those three people how to address texas. regrettably to flash forward, molly passed away in january of 2007. i will read the last paragraph. molly died in her bed at her tree-lined home in the last jen -- when they of january 2007. message boards went up around the country in different cities. flowers were placed outside her home. it was the anniversary of

congress passing an amendment to the u.s. constitution to abolish slavery. molly's life was a testimony to knocking people off their high horse for good end and protecting civil liberties which seems to be a word that gets bandied about as if it was a negative. her life was devoted to practicing good journalism in the spirit of protecting your right to know things, to hold people accountable and protect us from social injustice. i talked too much. i know i did. if you have any questions and you still have patience with us, if you want to add anything? >> i was crazy about molly but i was disappointed in her response to allegations of plagiarism.

comment on that? >> i guess i can. molly is just amazing. she was accused of plagiarism, a southern humorous, someone who specialize in writing some humor in a regional phone. molly owned up to it. she apologized. there are two elements at work where she wrote a letter to the author and explained -- she defended herself and said i did attribute the work to you and she did. she said you didn't give enough

to me and she might have been right. molly wrote her a letter, i took this seriously and i had been clear. he said you are quite a bit, aren't you? the way i said it -- away molly was saying it, wanted to be funny. i hope the humorist found some humor in it. molly's well attended memorial service, i dare say, one of the most -- best intended memorial

services in the history -- i have genuine great service by not running off molly's 1-liners. but correct me if i am wrong, mike was in attendance. >> all of the lines that molly had not attributed -- >> you had a bad feeling. >> it was almost like she was playing a practical joke. >> my final joke on you.

read it at my funeral. it was a very -- very serious. she did -- it was very public. she was very unhappy about it. >> i remember being at the office. then she said -- she was mean,

she wrote that -- >> i don't know if my daughter has read it yet. it made me laugh. i don't know why there was such colorful language. >> something is very confusing to me. >> dallas morning news -- what dallas was.

why would she choose to work there? >> she worked at the dallas times herald. forgive me if i did this as a counterat point. i worked at the dallas -- times harold at one point. may be that engendered some confusion. it was really known as more progressive, she said the dallas morning news -- she just -- the editors -- i worked there. they did not like molly ivins. i was offered a job at the dallas times herald. i mentioned in the book -- i don't mention myself by name but use it as an illustration. i was offered her job to go to the dallas times herald.

the editor had figured me out. he said you don't want to work for that fascist newspaper the dallas morning news. he was trying to mind meld with me. that is where they came from. they saw themselves as a liberal progressive paper. molly ivins was much happier but even within that long leash they said write whatever you want. it was a competitive newspaper. more advertisers -- she began disturbing advertisers. the one line where she said -- this really got her in trouble. a certain congressman from that area, this guy's iq got any

lower we will have to start watering him twice the day. she is up there doing that. if you put ronald reagan's brain -- it will fly backwards. the one i like, particularly strident speech by pat buchanan, quote, probably sounded better in the original german. and one that is mildly off color but i don't know. arnold schwarzenegger looks like a condom stuffed with walrus. there you have it. a process of accumulation. the editors begin -- the first moment after the times herald went away she got this great job and editors flew down here, we like your work and she said i always liked fort worth.

i am going to work there. they were a little cautious. would you mind sending us some of your work? faxing it to both of us so we can look at it before you send it to the copy desk, just want to check it out to take a look at it. her first column, the receptionist in the newsroom, molly ivins calling from austin saying i just want to let you know -- the editors who hired me -- they might want to check it out. i used the word below in my story. sorry for saying it. the editors, both of their lives flash before their lives and flashed back. they felt their jobs were in danger. they felt they made a horrible

mistake. they fixed the language. molly ivins didn't mind. she laughed and laughed. tweaking the nose at the bear she loved young people. she really fed off of their sense of healthy skepticism and anti authority. just laughing. the very last column in a poignant way she had to dictate from her death bed when she was brought to her home in travis heights, a wonderful assistant, molly said always remember to make the things in life ridiculous. rendered them ridiculous. make fun of them. all of the senator fogwarren

legwarrens of life, make them look ridiculous. the photograph in this book, we lingered about what to choose. this says it all. she really enjoyed life. >> in the austin paper we see more charles -- [inaudible] >> i am looking at your shirt that says fox news and underneath, we distort, you comply. unfair and imbalance is how you deal with it.

i don't know. >> usually they only ran one or two -- they didn't run all of them. they were edited down. i don't know why. >> i was really struck -- places like alabama, the balance was like that. >> yes, sir? >> how did the -- how did molly meat and the relationship developed between her and and richards? >> molly got back to texas in 1970 about the same time ann

richards was with her husband, a civil attorney. richards described to us as a homemaker. political interest but not a true political career. austin was an oasis if you were liberally politically inclined and progressive and people were coming from the outlying regions. it still happens to this day. willie nelson came to austin to get unbuttoned. molly was coming here the same time and individuals were coming and far smaller towns. it was going to happen. they were going to bump into each other. a annrichards was reading the

texas observer and her husband was going to end up in it. conscientious objectors and civil liberties work became a nexus. a anncame to hang out. they would go downtown and drink a beer and watch the sunset together. a metal trough and fill it with ice and they would watch the sunset and be surrounded by with syria. there was still a view back then. they got to know each other and developed political ambitions. you will see a great pattern that you might wrestle with of molly truly supporting ann in ways that journalists are encouraged not to do, holding meetings and planning sessions for ann richards to move her

political campaign forward. there are other journalists who like to dwell in dark personal speculation arenas. people began speculating that molly, and ann richards had to be lovers. what she said was if i was gay i would be far more interesting. she left it at that. there was speculation. a lot of people see a pattern -- political opponents of ann richards and people began hating -- molly had death threats issued against her. there are requests to the fbi to request molly. mail was forwarded that seemed

to contain powdered substances. they were sent to the fbi for analysis. people send her the most vitriolic, hateful, unbelievably malicious -- we quote some of them. to illustrate what she was contending with. lot of pressure. i am veering off of your question. ann richards was important in her development. the most important were in terms of becoming the public molly ivins. her father, john henry, and ann richards. >> and also how dave richards -- how they bonded and got to know each other. there was a group in austin that

-- naturally kind of where they formed the relationship. >> there are some amazing moments. molly tried to loosen the tight skin of her editor before it reached critical mass. she invited him to a party in boston. that is described in her book. my daughter has gone home now. i can say this without blushing. molly says please come to this party of my friend ann richards, and interesting figure, rising political figure. molly said she would be the governor of texas one day. the point is molly invited ab rosenthal to the texas house. when he knocks on the door to go

there, ann richard answers the door. and won't look directly at any of you. next to her is one of the literary lions of texas who became her escort and good friend. a great writer. one of the clients of literature in the united states and the best in texas. he looks over here and decided to dress as dr. julius erving, famous basketball player, wearing basketball shorts and put on a big afro wig. rosenthal put on an afro wig himself. i wish there was a photo of that. molly would never have to work

again. she would have great leverage. a picture of the editor in a bad way. she had a funny friendship with ann richards. they bonded, that sense of humor, singing songs. they were at a canoe together, it tipped over and they went in the water. brad said at the austin american states, the only writer i know who chronicles this fatefully in a beautiful way. one of the greatest musicians ever in america prevalent lean known for being a guy in austin

-- he defined austin--there's a doug psalm hill at the long center if you have not seen it, a tribute to him. he describes austin as a space ship from a magic place. mali called it lotus land. she came here and have a lot of fun writing funny things. it -- she really love austin. any other questions? thank you very much. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> molly ivins: a rebel life is published by public affairs books. visit publicaffairsbooks.com. >> joe scarborough, what are you reading? >> i am reading harold evans, a remarkable story. talk about when newspapers were in their heyday. he discovered -- he had a remarkable career with the times of london. it is a great book. i am reading of couple other books. i go through one line by line every few years and another book by a british historian called seven ages of paris which is a great history of paris. it is about is enjoyable history. >> your b